I remember well how anxiously we awaited their births. I remember the
frenzy of activity as we prepared their room, our house, and our lives
for the great impact we knew was coming. The impact came and turned our
lives upside down.

Today our children are teenagers and our life is frenzied with
activity. And yet it is all worth it because of the great joy of
watching the seasons of life change, evolve, and transform. What was
once is now gone. What will be is not yet here. But in this moment,
between the times, I live with hope.

I hope even in the face of so much wretchedness today. The America I
grew up in is gone. The America I yearn for is not yet. In this moment
of the in-between time I find myself brooding and worrying that what I
yearn for will not come to pass. I find myself anxious about the future
of my children. Will they become cannon fodder for an Empire committed
to permanent war? Will they have life snatched from them by a global
pandemic? Will they free fall into poverty if the economy collapses?

I have this wonderful dream of what life could be like. But I live in a
reality that feels more like a nightmare. It is in the ancient wisdom
of scripture that I find meaning for this present moment. It is in the
ancient wisdom that I discover seeds for hope.

Dreams and nightmares

There is a story of dreams and nightmares told in the Jewish wisdom of
Genesis. In the story a man named Joseph was locked away in an Egyptian
prison (Genesis 41 and 47:13ff). There he became known as a wise
interpreter of dreams. His abilities came to the attention of Pharaoh,
who had been having nightmares.

Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's nightmares as a warning that a great
famine was coming. If Pharaoh planned for the disaster, the
people and Pharaoh's empire would be saved. Pharaoh was grateful for
this interpretation and placed Joseph in charge of the economy. For
seven years, the land and the labor of the people created surplus that
Joseph wisely stored away.

After seven years the predicted famine came upon the land with a
vengeance. Hunger ruled the nations. But in Egypt there was plenty.
Nevertheless, Joseph, perhaps seduced by the privileges of
Pharaoh's wealth, power, and philosophy, did not open the grain silos to share with the people. Instead he forced the people to sell
their livestock to Pharaoh in exchange for bread. Then he forced them
to sell Pharaoh their land, and finally their bodies until all were
enslaved to Pharaoh. All, that is, except the priests, who continued to
bless the power of Pharaoh.

The story is a snapshot of Empire, which plunders the commonwealth of
the people while protecting the wealth of the elite, with religion
going along for the ride. It is a story of hope betrayed.

Jubilee and resistance

But the ancient wisdom also tells a story of hope regained. Alongside
the story of Empire, which rises up repeatedly in history, there is
also a story of resistance to Empire. The story of resistance emerges
from the vision of economic justice known as the Jubilee. The Jubilee
is central to the Torah, the Prophets, and the ministry of both Jesus
and Paul.

The Jubilee was a blueprint for a just economy. It put a floor under
misfortune and misery, preventing generational poverty, even as it put
a ceiling on wealth, preventing the emergence of an aristocratic
dynasty. It did this through elevating ownership of land, which in
those days was wealth, into the hands of God the Creator. Because God
owned the land (the wealth), we human beings had no right to seize it
for ourselves. It was to be shared for the benefit of all.

The first lesson of the Jubilee was articulated in the Creation story
when God rested on the seventh day. Therefore, we human beings, created
in God's image, were also to rest once a week.

This was great good news for the poor who are always easily exploited
and sometimes (literally) worked to death. It was good news for all who
married their work and lost relationship with their community. The
Sabbath was the great release from the incessant need to produce and to
consume. It also extended outward into an ecological ethic that called
for the resting of animals. Even the land was rested every seven years.
But the most astonishing event occurred every 50th year when the
economy was completely re-designed as wealth was redistributed, debts
were forgiven, and land returned to its original owner.

It's not hard to see what this meant for agrarian societies, where
families could be forced to sell their land in order to pay off debt
resulting from a poor harvest or other mishap. Poverty reached its
conclusion when landless peasants had to sell their possessions, and
even themselves and members of their families as bond-slaves.

The great 50-year amnesty called for the return of the land to its
original owners, therefore ending generational poverty. All debt was
written off; slaves were freed, and, importantly, given the means to be
economically self-sufficient.

This unilateral restructuring of the economy was to remind Israel that
the land belonged to God and that the Israelites were chosen to be a
counter-cultural people who must never return to an imperial system like
Pharaoh's that produced slavery for some while enriching an elite.

The dying of the American empire

Some will say that the Jubilee is irrelevant today, that it was an
economic strategy for a small, relational agrarian culture, nothing
like today's complex global capitalist culture. Indeed, what does the
Jubilee have to do with us?

The notion of Jubilee emerged from a commitment to live an
anti-imperial life. The Jubilee was an economy set free from imperial
ambition. Today, we live inside an Empire. We have chosen the path of
Pharaoh: a path of domination rather than justice. Under the guise of
priestly (Christian) rhetoric, the current administration has
disrespected the Constitution, and made a mockery of our political
process that balances power between branches of government. It has
abandoned the rule of international law, disregarded human and civil
rights, and unleashed economic chaos on the poor and on the land. We
are dealing with outlaws who are drunk on the blood of imperial power.
Whether it be Afghanistan or Iraq, Venezuela or Colombia, the
Philippines or Haiti, wherever brown-skinned people live, the dogs of
war are unleashed. Whenever people claim their own livestock, land, or
even their bodies, this administration steps in to suppress any that
dare to rise as an alternative to Empire.

Meanwhile, the causes of Christ—love of enemy, forgiveness of sin,
practice of generosity, openness to the stranger, resistance to Empire,
liberation of the poor—are today being subverted by a hardening of
heart. To put it bluntly, Christ is once again being crucified through
the merger of privileged imperial wealth and the religious priests who
benefit from Empire's plunder. We are, in other words, living in
similar times to those betrayed by Joseph. Pharaoh wants our livestock,
land, and labor.

But Empires contain the seeds of their own destruction. Today we are seeing the hollowing out of our institutions,
the defeat of our military, the environmental consequences of our
arrogance, and the bewilderment of our people. Truly we live in a time
without vision. The Empire has run its course and is dying. The
American way of life is dying: 6 percent of the world's population
consuming 40 percent of the world's resources is neither sustainable
nor just. We need to let the Empire die. And as it is dying, we need to
build a parallel culture to replace it.

Today's Jubilee

What would this “parallel culture” look like today? What would it look like to be freed from Pharaoh's economy?

In the political world, imagine America reversing its economic policies
so that we might spend as much on debt relief and economic
redevelopment as we currently do on the military.

Imagine if we spent as much money on alternative energy sources as we do on fossil-fuel exploration and extraction.

Imagine if our food policy were centered around small-scale organic
farming instead of large-scale corporate agriculture. Such a reversal
of policy would radically reorient our relationships both
inter?nationally and within our own nation. Such a reversal would cause
the trees to clap their hands.

Imagine how our personal and congregational lives would change if we,
for example, withdrew our money from corporate banks that feed off the
debt of others, investing instead in co-ops and community development
banks.

Imagine the land that houses our church buildings and our own backyards
becoming miniature farms growing fresh produce for food banks and the
neighborhood.

In the 1930s Myles Horton and others created the Highlander Folk School
to train people of faith to organize labor in the coal mines and
textile factories of the south. In the 1950s, they switched their
priority to civil rights, training amongst others Rosa Parks, Martin
Luther King, Clarence Jordan (who trained Millard Fuller of Habitat for
Humanity), the Freedom Riders, and so on. Highlander, a little jewel in
the Appalachian region of Tennessee, was a seed-factory that nurtured
and sustained the civil rights movement, and it's still around today
working on local issues. Imagine our faith communities as little
Highlanders.

As my children move through the frenzy of their teenage years, I live
with the hope that their tomorrow will be a time of fulfillment,
abundance, and awakening. I hope that their world will embrace the
values of Jubilee and resist the seductions of Empire. I hope that they
will learn to share what is stored in the grain silos. I hope that they
will build a better world.

I know that this hope for their tomorrow begins with us today. It is in
our dreaming and our willingness to sacrifice and create that the
future will be born. If we cannot articulate and take simple steps into
the world we want, then others, who care not at all for tomorrow, will
impose the harshness of violence upon us.

I hope that we are still capable of great and noble things. I hope that
we are still capable of creating life and celebrating its inevitable
evolution. I hope that we are still capable of faith and hope and love.
I hope for the year of Jubilee.

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